


Joe & Turkey

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Original Work
Genre: Family, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 15:46:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12485148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: He turns onto his side, trying to get comfortable in the old bed, and finally fades into sleep with the comforting weight of his dog curling up into a tight little knot at the back of his knees.It's breakfast before Joe remembers that Turkey died twenty-four years ago.





	Joe & Turkey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dawnstonedagger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstonedagger/gifts).



> I was looking through the old photos I collect, and this one wanted to be in your story. Happy Halloween!

After decades living in the south of Spain and rarely travelling farther north than Montpellier, England feels even more cold and grey than Joe remembers every time he visits. He watches the rain slide down the outside of the car windows, the splash of tyres in the slowly-moving traffic on the way out of Dover, and can't see a single spot of blue in the angry winter sky.

Barbara twists round in the front passenger seat to smile at him. "Alright, Dad?"

"Yeah, love," Joe says, and he is - there are more important things than weather, after all. Beside him, covered up with a crochet patchwork blanket, his granddaughter has just woken up from her nap and is studying him like she's not quite sure who he is, even though she and her parents spent last Christmas at his place in Jerez, charming the hell out of all of his friends. "Hiya, Susie."

She considers him for a moment longer, and breaks out into a glorious gap-toothed grin. "Hi, Grandad." Then out of nowhere, in that blithe way five-year-olds have of saying crazy things as though they're completely normal, "Our house is haunted."

"Is that so?" Joe asks, fake-marvelling.

"Yeah, ask Daddy."

Peter catches his eye in the rearview mirror; he looks some mixture of charmed and exasperated, a feeling Joe recalls all too well after raising kids of his own. "Apparently these are special ghosts that daddies can't see."

"You don't _try_ ," Susan says severely. "I bet Grandad can see him."

Joe's as surprised as anyone to discover that, actually, he almost can.

 

*

 

It's an old Georgian house, generations of lives and deaths all heaped invisibly on top of one another in the space between the scuffed oak floorboards and the high plaster ceilings. No wonder it's full of ghosts. His own past is almost a whole parade of ghosts on its own: the father he remembers most vividly as a pair of twinkly eyes and an enormous bushy moustache, who left in 1917 and never returned from Passchendaele; his mother's beautiful smile, which vanished at about the same time and made very few appearances after; the nanny he loved so much that he made a fervent child's promise to name his first daughter Barbara after her, and did; abandoned toys and forgotten books and beloved pets and lost childhood friends, all the detritus of a youth left far behind.

Installed in the guest room on the top floor, which a million years ago was his bedroom until 1928 when he married Edith and they moved to a flat of their own, Joe can't settle despite his tiredness. The wind is whipping up to a gale outside, shaking a rattle of tree branches against the window, and the old house keeps _creaking_ in a way he'd forgotten. _Spain doesn't creak_ , he thinks crossly, _and it doesn't piss with rain either_.

He turns onto his side, trying to get comfortable on the old bed, and finally fades into sleep with the comforting weight of his dog curling up into a tight little knot at the back of his knees.

 

*

 

It's breakfast before Joe remembers that Turkey died twenty-four years ago.

 

*

 

"Susan," Joe says, scraping pretend-butter onto his pretend-bread and drinking pretend-tea from a tiny toy cup in her playroom.

"Is your tea nice?"

"It's the nicest tea I've ever drunk in my whole life."

"Good." Susan looks pleased and pours more nothing from her toy teapot. "Is that enough?"

"That's plenty, sweetheart, thank you. Can I ask you something?"

She finishes pouring for all her bears and dolls first, then glances at him over the rim of the cup as she's sipping. "What?"

"What did you mean your house is haunted? Who by?"

"No one scary. Are you scared of ghosts?"

He's never really thought about it before, never believed in them - could never bear to, especially not since losing Edith and half his friends in the war - but the rushing prickle of goosebumps on his arms at breakfast comes back to him now and he has to resist the urge to rub them away. "No," he says, not entirely truthful.

"You shouldn't be," Susan says. She picks through the toys she's arranged in a circle around her picnic blanket and chooses a scruffy-looking knitted poodle, holding it out to him. "I think he looks like Miss Mary."

Joe can't help thinking about Turkey as a tiny puppy, smaller even than the toy he's clutching in his hands. The butcher boy who delivered to the kitchen had him in his bicycle basket amongst the paper packages of sausages one day. _He's the runt_ , he'd said, _my father wanted to drown him but I kidnapped him_ , and Joe had run up three flights of stairs to fetch some money from his room and breathlessly begged to buy him. The puppy's first meal was turkey, tiny slivers of meat Joe hand-fed to him in front of the kitchen fireplace while Cook fussed around making melodramatic predictions that he'd die within the week, and for reasons he could never understand the name had stuck.

"You think?"

"Well, I've never _seen_ him," Susan explains in the sort of tone that implies she thinks he ought to know this already, "but I can _feel_ him. He runs in the corridor, tap tap tap tap little feet little claws. He likes when I throw balls for him to chase, but he doesn't bring them back. He just runs around. He likes it upstairs. I never heard him down here. He likes your room."

 

*

 

Past midnight, when he's reasonably sure Barbara and Pete and Susan are all sleeping, Joe sits on the edge of his bed turning the ball Susan gave him over and over in his hands. After a full day of reasoning with himself he feels stupid even considering this, but now it's the middle of the night again it's easy to let reason slip away.

"Fetch," he whispers, gently rolling the ball into the hallway.

Seconds later, it skids back into the room. Joe's breath catches hard in his throat; for a moment it's difficult to swallow around the painful lump there.

"Good boy," he murmurs quietly into the darkness, and he could swear he hears a joyful little bark in reply.


End file.
